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Who Killed Amanda Palmer (Alternate Tracks)
In December 2008, Amanda Palmer released an alternative version of Who Killed Amanda Palmer online, it was not released on physical media. The release consisted of one-take alternate recordings of some of the songs from the album, as well as some tracks not on the original album. Track Listing #"1.1.94 - 4:37 #"The Point of It All - 5:33 #"Night Reconnaissance - 4:19 #"Runs in the Family - 4:06 #"Blake Says - 4:55 #"Strength Through Music - 2:37 #"Guitar Hero - 5:21 #"Boyfriend in a Coma - 2:56 #"Oasis - 2:15 #"You May Kiss The Bride - 4:00 #"I Will Follow You into the Dark - 4:58 #"Ampersand - 5:59 #"Straight - 5:15 #"Astronaut - 4:40 #"Have to Drive - 5:16 Liner Notes # 1.1.94 this is the oldest, by far, in the whole batch of demos. i wrote it in - i think - 1994. which would make sense. people have been asking how it's pronounced. i always call it "one one ninety four." that was a special new years. # The Point of It All i wrote this song in one sitting in lisbon, portugal, thus proving for the first time that i could write a song on the road if i just got off my lazy ass, skipped lunch and DID it. and i did. and i'm very proud i did. the idea for the song came to me that morning on the bus. i was walking through the front lounge and i saw our monitor tech sitting on the couch and staring into space. and the line "no one can stare at the wall as good as you" came into my head with the melody. and it stuck there. and usually, those things come and go 23 times a day and i let them fly away. but this time i decided to skip lunch and write, since i had a dressing room all to myself in the huge government building we were playing that night. had i not had the room, i wouldn't have written the song. thank you, lisbon. # Night Reconnaissance this recording has a funny story, because ben fired himself from drums. lots of journalists have asked: "what is the difference between a dresden dolls song and an amanda fucking palmer song?" and my answer is that there is none. it's mostly coincidence. i assumed this song was going to go on the WKAP record and so did ben. and then we tracked it with his band, and ben listened to it a few times and said "you know what? i'm firing myself as your drummer for this song. viglione will do a better job. make it a dolls song." ladies and gentlemen, ben folds. you gotta love him. # Runs In The Family like i've mentioned before, this one was itchy for me. i didn't like the angsty angsty lyrics, they felt like too much of my teenage self. but ben loved the song. as you can hear, there's a bridge in the song that later got chopped out. that was all ben folds. he was convinced it slowed the tune down. i have to agree. it's better when the driving pace never lets up. this song is almost impossible to sing live. in fact it IS impossible to sing live. i have to edit out words. if you listen to a live recording, you'll notice that certain phrases get contracted and certain words get dropped. it is a necessity, this song is literally not singable the way it wound up on the actual record. # Blake Says blake really likes this song. he wrote me an email saying so. that made me happy. when the record first got finished, i invited him out for breakfast and i played it for him on my hi-fi system. he approved. i was relieved. how many velvet underground/lou reed references can you spot? it's a fun game. email me the answer, maybe i'll mail you a toaster. # Strength Through Music i didn't think this one was going to wind up on the record. i thought it was too weird, too slow, too something. ben loved it. you can hear similarities between this song and "1.1.94", for sure, and people have pointed that out. "1.1.94" came first and i think, since it had been at the bottom of the pile so long, weirdly re-incarnated itself into "strength through music", at least those first few chords. this will happen all the time with songs. i don't remember writing this one. at all. i must have been tired. # Guitar Hero we had a bitch of a time creating the right sound for this song and i maintain it holds its own as a solo piano tune. # Boyfriend In A Coma i think this song would have been great on the record, but it slid down the list quickly. but as far as good demos go, i think this is one of the best. i wrote this one in the winter of 2003-4 when my (fairly new) boyfriend was in the hospital for a few months, paralyzed by a crazy syndrome that left him, for days, unable to move anything but his eyes. i wrote it and recorded it live the same week (the only time i'd played it live, until recently at the boston show in november) at a little gallery called the zeitgeist in cambridge. i took the recording to the hospital the next day and put the headphones on him so he could listen. he couldn't answer with words, but his tears did the job. # Oasis like my old producer friend sean slade used to say, "just three minutes of truth, baby." # You May Kiss The Bride can you hear me saying "goth!" at the end of this song? you can? i can. i left that in there on purpose. sorry. i had to. ben really liked this tune because it was very different in structure to the rest of them, but i squirmed at the gothiness of it. i wrote this one when i was about 18 or 19 and though i liked the melody, the lyrics were just too gloom and doom to put on the record. so there you have it. it does, aside from it's gothiness, contain some of my favorite lyrics, so i don't mind having it out in the world. # I Will Follow You Into The Dark i was in hawaii right before getting to ben's studio for the first time, at a yoga retreat. i met a guy named david who worked in the kitchen and when i was done with the retreat we decided to take off for the weekend and rent a car and drive across the big island, over the mountains. i hadn't brought any CDs with me, and the car had a CD player, so we stole two CDs from the cafe at the retreat center. one was a chemical brothers CD and one was a mysterious mix CD with no writing on it. and this song was on it. and i played it over and over and over again. it was a long drive, about 5 hours maybe. and this song probably got about 50+ spins. i had no idea who it was by or where it was from. which was good. and it was so stuck in my head that when i got to nashville, i asked joe one night to turn on the tape deck so i could record it. and i did. i played it in one or two takes, threw an extra vocal on top, and posted it to the internet a few days later. i like the future. and i love this song. the slowed-down rendition kind of reminds me of what iron and wine did with "such great heights." you can inject and infuse new meanings into covers however you want. faithful covers are the worst. they are useless unless you are a bar band. # Ampersand this was one of the songs i knew, without a doubt, would go on the album. '' ''this is an ampersand: &. any questions? # Straight Strings this song was recorded for the record itself, with a full string section, and battled against "another year" for a while for the last song slot. i'll never know whether i made the right decision or not. but i love this tune. this song was recorded around the same time i was making the record, but at home in boston, in my bedroom on the night that noah came over and helped me set up garage band and a small mixing board next to my piano. it's the only song i've recorded at home, because the minute i came back to town and things were unplugged, i couldn't remember how to set the fucking thing up again. but i got one recording out of it, at least. # Astronaut my favorite. i remember when i was first playing around with the intro to the song. it was all i had written, but i kept playing it over and over, waiting for it to turn into something. this would have been...i don't know, in 2006 sometime. i was playing it in soundcheck on a dolls tour. i was playing it at home. i was recording with ...and you will know us by the trail of dead in austin. there was a big old concert grand piano in the studio and i was playing the "astronaut" intro. which was still all i had, just those YA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA bangs. and conrad, the singer from trail of dead, was listening from the other room and called out "is that yours?" and i called back "yep, but it hasn't gone anywhere yet" and he called back "it's going to be a good one" and i called back "i know, dude." sometime i want to make a whole record with that guy. # Have To Drive this song is the only song that i already had finished in my head - as far as the orchestration went - when i demo'd it for ben. ever since i first wrote it, around 1999, i heard the cinematic swells and strings and crashes and orchestral bangs perfectly in my head. that made this song different from all the other songs on the record, which were all up for grabs as far as the arrangements went. ben and i almost came to fisticuffs over one section of the song (in the final version, where the choir comes in on "we will save...") we had paul buckmaster, the string arranger and orchestrator, do about 10 different mixes. ben won, in the end. of course he did. he's magical ben folds. i'll have to go back and listen and see if i still think he's right. the most essential part of this song is understanding that the first line includes the word "deer." yes, "deer," not "dear." i have my reasons. Category:Amanda Palmer Albums